From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The area ceded to the United States by Great Britain in 1783 (light
brown) is universally recognized as the Eastern United States.
Louisiana and Florida acquisitions were recognized as the Western
and Southern frontiers in early days of the Republic. Although East
of the Rockies, Texas is considered Western.

The Eastern Half of The United States,
the American East, or simply the
East is traditionally defined as the states east of the Mississippi
River. The first two tiers of states west of the Mississippi
have traditionally been considered part of the West, but can be
included in the East today; usually in regional models that exclude
a Central region. As of July 1,
2007, the estimated population of the 26 states east of the
Mississippi (not including the small portions of Minnesota and
Louisiana that are east of the river) plus the District of Columbia
totals 171,222,291 out of 305,986,357 in the whole nation
(including Puerto Rico and insular areas in the US but not in the
East), or 55.95% of the U.S. population.
The Eastern Half has no longer a unified culture, due the vast
number of immigrants which flooded the region in the mid 1800s to
the present day. The East is composed of three sub-regions: The South, The
Midwest, and The Northeast.

Contents

The South

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American
South, Dixie, Down South, or simply the South—constitutes a large
distinctive region in the southeastern and south-central United
States. Because of the region's unique cultural and historic
heritage, including Native Americans; early European settlements of
English, Scots-Irish, Scottish and German heritage[4]; importation
of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans; growth of a large
proportion of African Americans in the population, reliance on
slave labor, and legacy of the Confederacy after the American Civil
War, the South developed its own customs, literature, musical
styles, and varied cuisines, that have profoundly shaped
traditional American culture.The South is one of the most unique
and culturally diverse regions of the nation whose culture is
deeply rooted in the American Civil War.

In the last few decades, the South has become more
industrialized and urban, attracting numerous internal and
international migrants. The American South is among the
fastest-growing areas in the United States.

New
England

New England is a region of the United States located in the
northeastern corner of the country, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean,
Canada and the state of New York, consisting of the modern states
of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut.[4]

In one of the earliest English settlements in the New World,
English Pilgrims from Europe first settled in New England in 1620,
in the colony of Plymouth. In the late 18th century, the New
England colonies would be among the first North American British
colonies to demonstrate ambitions of independence from the British
Crown, although they would later oppose the War of 1812 between the
United States and Britain.

New England produced the first pieces of American literature and
philosophy and was home to the beginnings of free public education.
In the 19th century, it played a prominent role in the movement to
abolish slavery in the United States. It was the first region of
the United States to be transformed by the Industrial
Revolution.[5]

It is a region with one of the highest levels of support for the
Democratic Party in the United States, with the majority of voters
in every state voting for the Democrats in the 1992, 1996, 2004,
and 2008 Presidential elections, and every state but New Hampshire
voting for Al Gore in 2000. Following the 2008 elections, all
members of the House of Representatives from New England belong to
the Democratic Party.

The
Mid-West

The Midwestern United States (in the U.S. generally referred to
as the Midwest) is one of the four geographic regions within the
United States of America that are officially recognized by the
United States Census Bureau.

The region consists of twelve states in the central and inland
northeastern US: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota,
and Wisconsin.[1] A 2006 Census Bureau estimate put the population
at 66,217,736. Both the geographic center of the contiguous U.S.
and the population center of the U.S. are in the Midwest. The
United States Census Bureau divides this region into the East North
Central States (essentially the Great Lakes States) and the West
North Central States.

Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Detroit
and Indianapolis. Chicagoland is the largest metropolitan
statistical area, followed by Metro Detroit, and the Twin
Cities.[2] Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is the oldest city in the
region, having been founded by French missionaries and explorers in
1668.

The term Midwest has been in common use for over 100 years.
Another term sometimes applied to the same general region is "the
heartland".[3] Other designations for the region have fallen into
disuse, such as the "Northwest" or "Old Northwest" (from "Northwest
Territory") and "Mid-America". Since the book Middletown appeared
in 1929, sociologists have often used Midwestern cities (and the
Midwest generally) as "typical" of the entire nation.[4] The region
has a higher employment-to-population ratio (the percentage of
employed people at least 16 years old) than the Northeast, the
West, the South, or the Sun Belt states.[5]

Four of the states associated with the Midwestern United States
(Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota) are
traditionally referred to as belonging to the Great Plains region.
However, in recent years they are often included in the Midwestern
region.

Major
population centers

The following is a list of the 22 largest
cities in the East in alphabetical order:

LEGEND: The
superscript ₥ links to the region's map,
italics indicates a link to a related wikiarticle, numbers
in parenthesis (0+1) indicate the number of full and partial
states, and a "/" indicates an ambiguous # of states.